Bryce Traister

(He, Him, His)

Dean

English, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies

Other Titles: Professor, English
Office: CCS 323C
Phone: 250.807.9357
Email: bryce.traister@ubc.ca

Research Summary

American Literature, especially the colonial and antebellum periods; religious studies; American Cultural Studies; science fiction.

Biography

Bryce Traister studies and teaches courses in early American literature and culture. He holds a BA and PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught for 20 years at Western University in London, Ontario, before joining the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies in 2017 He is the author, most recently, ofFemale Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism, published by Ohio State University Press, and is the editor of American Literature and the New Puritan Studies, (September 2017). More recently, he published an edited collection of original essays for Cambridge, The Cambridge Companion to Early American Literature (November 2021), and has an essay on Herman Melville forthcoming in American Literature.

He is interested in many things, especially the historic and continuing role of religion in American politics and popular culture, as well as some very fundamental questions about the way we talk about and study American literature in the age of globalism. He reads and watches a lot of science fiction as well—he reports he is a paid up member-in-good-standing of the nerd club. While on leave in 2022, he attended several conferences and continuing research on the histories and intersection of vaccine skepticism and religious belief in the contemporary US.